Central European budget carrier Wizz Air is cutting 1,000 personnel, nearly one-fifth of its staff, after its operation was reduced to a bare minimum by the coronavirus crisis.

The airline says it has been forced to take the “difficult step” to make workers redundant, adding that it has also carried out additional short-term furlough of staff.

Wizz Air has a fleet of Airbus jets and is planning to return 32 older aircraft by the end of 2022-23 as their leases expire, as part of its measures to trim costs and improve liquidity.

It states that its balance sheet is still “very strong” with “excellent” liquidity including €1.5 billion in cash.

A quick internet search (not enough posts to give the link) came up with a French government web site that gave the total cost of healthcare in 2018 as 203.5 billion euros with 78.1% paid by the state.

"@ jabird : I meant Countries that rely intensively to air to link their population centers, those are likely to restore traffic earlier . So far air transportation spread the Covid-19 globally and much quicker than trains .
@Bidule : Maintaining governance and territorial continuity is transporting essential goods and staff every day .The French air force is not equipped for that .
Their Estrerel squadron is only 5 aircraft ( 3 A310s and 2 A340) the 6 Flacons are only VIPs seating and the 2 A330 MRT are used for other tasks. The Transalls, Hercules and A400M do not have a transatlantic or trans pacific range . On the other Air France has over 100 long range transport aircraft at its disposal, (70 B777s 15 A330s , plus 18 A380 and B787 ) and is already performing this task. The other small private French airlines ( what is left of them ) are too small to be of significance in this .
Yes UTA was heavily used by the French military in the 70s and ,80s ,and not only for carrying troops .They also paid a heavy price for it in 1984 and 1989 :(. As to UTA buying Air France in 1990 , I like the humor but UTA in 1990 was only 13 aircraft ..
The " secu" cost figure was already corrected, but for info the AF rescue package or re- nationalization costs are not yet fixed. Anyway it will be virtual money.. we can agree on that .

UK Chancellor talking about painful days ahead, economically.

Here in the UK we are bracing for a 35% reduction in the economy and a doubling of unemployment to 2 000 000.

I hope not.

We’ve also got some big spending issues to face: CV19 Universal Credit; HS2 Rail; Trident; “Levelling up the UK pledge”... and BREXIT. No deal yet.

Crises like the one we are seeing now with COVID19 sometimes brings out the worst in humanity. It also often brings out the best. I don’t know how much readers here are following the massive leaps being made in research and trials, not only for a vaccine, but also for treatments of moderate and severe symptoms of COVID19.

It’s very hard, impossible, to predict how the next 6-24 months will look like for our industry and the wider economy. Having said that, I‘m
very optimistic that we will have meaningful treatment options on the table in the next 3-6 months which will give a massive boost to the markets and the general public. it will also help us manage a likely second wave of the virus later this year. These treatments will make a huge difference until we have a vaccine available.

Captain, spot on. Totally agree. I would add "mandatory face masks" in confined spaces, combined with anti viral treatments/solutions this will allow us to move around again & travel until the vaccine will fix it for ever.
The global response to the next pandemic will be much more effective, everything will change in this area.
In the end COVID19 will fix a few aberrations of the previous system.

We can but hope. These things have a very nasty habit of mutating.

But don't forget that vaccines are not 100% effective for everyone. Before Covid there were still many "normal" flu deaths of which a fair percentage included people who had had their annual flu jab.

A bit of research on Wikipedia on Coronaviruses is not very encouraging . common cold has some coronavirus variants , for which no vaccine exists , and as immunity is concerned , you can get it back multiple times during the same year, some kids up to 7 times per winter...
The good news is that now every laboratory in the world is working on it, as there is serious money to be made, some even do cooperate with one another, and there is serious hope we can get one for wide public use in the next 12-18 months.
What the aviation situation will be then and who will be eager to travel after the economic impact is basically the subject of this discussion.

Speaking as a physician, while the annual formulations of flu vaccines is far from perfect at preventing influenza infections, those who have been vaccinated are far more likely to have mild cases not requiring hospital care, and dramatically less likely to die.

A future COVID19 vaccine with the same efficiency as the normal flu vaccine only requires about 40% of the population to be vaccinated to give sufficient reliable protection against a pandemic influenza. This requires people in high risk groups to be monitored, take extra precautions, and confirmed cases to be quarantined much as we are doing now in most parts of the world. If no extra measures like these are taken at least 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated to get the same protection.

But, from what I have just read, of those 40% vaccinated the vaccine will only be effective for an average of 45% when taking all age groups into account. It will be most effective for the young (65% average apparently) and least effective for the elderly (16% was quoted in the paper I read). Those figures, which I was never aware of previously, don't comfort me. I guess ignorance (on my part) was bliss. :)

It is my understanding that today’s flu vaccines have efficiencies way higher than that, around 70-80%. Vaccination is also not only to protect the vaccinated people from getting the virus, especially when we are talking about a pandemic, but to actually stop the virus from spreading in a population. That’s achieved by vaccinating 40/80%, depending on whether or not additional measurements (see above) are also rolled out.

People here are not comparing like with like. The influenza virus mutates far more rapidly than coronaviruses. The only reason we have no vaccines against coronaviruses is that none of them - before this - was dangerous enough to make it worthwhile.

Will Titan Airways survive this downturn in the industry.

The airlines that deserve to survive are those who have looked after their passengers during this crisis. Not those who cut and run as soon as possible and then have used the funds from cancelled flights as interest free loans from their passengers. They should remember that most of us have long memories and will be very selective in the future and look very carefully at the small print on the booking conditions. And yes before everyone bounces up and down I do note the argument from IATA concerning the problems concerning refunds viz a viz a promise of a possible flight in the future with a piece of paper called a flight credit. I wish I could use the same logic with my bank!

Yep, incredibly strong management tram that looks after each and every staff member since I first encoutered them in March of '89 when the 404's were parked next to LFC and the new fuel farm :)

If this really applied to " the most of is", Ryanair et al. would not have existed, United would have no customers, etc.

If air travel starts up again, most of us will just go for the lowest fare, regardless of present or future behaviour of the airline.

And most of us, most of the time, don't have a choice who to fly with. I do for flying to London, though that dictated which airport I went to. I don't for other UK internal flights.

Correct. And that solidifies the vaccination case discussed above even further.

In the news today concerning treatments of severe COVID19 symptoms:

“Early impressions from a study at the University of Chicago Medicine were reported by Stat news, a healthcare industry publication, showing rapid recoveries in almost all of the more than a hundred severely ill patients.”

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.f...6-55250cbbbaff

Keep an eye on major indices today.